


Fever Break

by ThatwasJustaDream



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Community: 1_million_words, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 23:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Weekend Challenge on the  1_Million_Words community. The prompt: "If you can't stand the heat...".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fever Break

He was burning – too hot to sweat. And shivering; something cool enveloping him, jolts of something even colder randomly touching his face, neck, shoulders.

 “Why were the penguins laughing?”

Steve croaked it out, trying to open his eyes but they felt sewn shut. Someone must have noticed, because something damp arrived to wipe softly across them, and they blinked slowly open. Fingers slid an ice chip into his mouth. It was like a piece of heaven melting on his tongue.

It was… so dark in the ambulance and his eyes felt… burned. He could make out Danny pressing a chemical cold pack wrapped in cloth to his skin. They had him covered in a cooling blanket, not all that cold; probably afraid to send him into shock.

“Not penguins, babe. HPD and EMTs. They found you. Your temp was 107. It’s only down to 104."

Steve remembered: Getting a tip on the smuggling ring while driving back from the leeward side toward Diamond Head. It was a tip with a timer on it, so he ignored Danny’s pleas over the phone not to go in alone.

“Why were they… laugh…”

“Not laughing. They were relieved. It took forty hours to find you.”

Only that? It had felt like four, five days. Couldn’t be, he realized, or he’d be dead.

“I screwed up.”

“Yeah, you did.” Danny exchanged the cold pack for a fresh one, and he could feel how hard D was working not to say more. He sensed the med techs nearby, now, watching his IV, sending back vitals over a cellphone.

He almost had them. Then, a blinding pain to the back of his head, the thunk of a trunk door shutting over him. He came to as they were walking away from him in Ka’ena Point State park. They’d left him tied, gagged and taped fast to a metal post on the abandoned railroad tracks -- the most remote, sun blistered, windy spot on Oahu.

There were moments in the hours ahead when it hit him - he’d be lucky if anyone ever found his bones. Let alone him. Unless one of those guys cracked, and the kind of person who would do this…? 

“Am I gonna…”

“You’d better not,” Danny leaned in to say it against his ear, to keep this as private as it could be in an ambulance full of people. “’Cause if you do, I am _so_ fucked." 

The fact that Danny wouldn’t promise… he must look like a roasted potato.

“I don’t know why I do … things like…”

“Yes you do,” It was a whisper, but Danny might as well have been shouting. “You do it because you don’t _value_ yourself. And if you don’t care about you, it means you don’t really care about ... _us_. You don't get how much we _need_ you, or you'd _stop_ it. But you _don’t_.”

Steve tried to get the words ‘I’m sorry’ out but his throat felt welded shut again. Another ice chip - Steve could see better now, opened up for it, and noticed the bandage tight around Danny’s hand. Half-dried blood was showing through, all along his knuckles.

He raised a hand to Danny’s, a silent question, but Danny gently pushed it back down.

“Once you get past this we are going to a counselor. And you’re talking through all of your shit,” He wasn’t taking questions, wasn’t whispering any more either. “If I have to actually _drag_ you, you'll go until you _get_ it. Until you would never take another crazy chance again.”

“Okay.”

“Damn right it's okay.” Steve felt lips on his forehead, near the corner of one eye. “Didn’t ask you if it was."

He was already dreading it; lying here half dead in an ambulance he was already dreading having to say shit out loud that he’d never even let himself think about. But judging from the fury in that voice, he didn’t have a choice; Danny may have almost lost him, but he could hear how very close he was to losing Danny. And that couldn’t happen.

“Temp’s falling. One hundred point four,” one of the techs said, and Steve felt it-- a sudden rush, his heart pounding, lungs fighting to keep up as the sweat began to pour off him.

"Hold on, it'll be all right," Danny murmured reassuring words, but Steve noticed how Danny reached down to get one arm under him, to hold him, his other hand dropping over Steve's heart to feel it beating, to reassure himself that it would slow to normal, find the right rhythm... not stop.

This is when everything would change.

And suddenly, Steve couldn’t wait.


End file.
